Vancouver civic election shows that much is up for grabs in an unstable climate

Catching up here after many weeks, where I’ve been slowed down by a combo of too much election news and killer colds and coughs.

But here we are, in what is surely one of the stranger municipal election cycles of the last 50 years. (Counting out Nanaimo here, whose problems seem to go far beyond mere civic politics.)

I keep telling those who ask that I have little sense of how all of this is going to evolve over the next six months and who will ultimately be the leading contenders among the mayoral candidates or parties. There’s still so much sorting out to do.

The tentative conclusions I have come to are that

This could be an election where a mayoral candidate wins with less than 30 per cent of the vote (which would make it about 15 per cent or less of the total number of potential voters) given the potential vote-splitting on both right and left.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if we end up with a council that has no clear party majority. While developers in town are probably sweating at that possibility, in reality it won’t be that different from the typical smaller-town city council, where there are no parties and voting alignments can shift with each issue.

In the meantime, to catch up, where are we on all fronts?

Squamish hereditary chief and council member Ian Campbell announced today he is running for the Vision mayoral spot. His announcement was quite a splash, with lots of supporters and lots of emphasis on the Indigenous angle. I interviewed him yesterday and my story is here. Vision’s decision to have a mayoral nomination process is the result of a struggle inside the party over what to do in this cycle, which arises from members’ very different ideas of where Vision is at. Some think the party is near dead and that it should simply acknowledge that gracefully and co-operate with the other progressive parties. Other stalwarts believe the party is still a dominant force, with a database of voters, volunteers, and a track record of knowing how to run a campaign. That group thinks that, even if Vision can’t win this time, it needs to stay alive for the next election. To do that, it needs to have a profile and be able to do some fundraising. To do THAT, it needs a mayoral candidate. As well, to that group, it looked as though Shauna Sylvester’s campaign, which looked promising, was not showing signs of momentum. And Kennedy Stewart, the other independent that party members might have supported, only started making noises about running just as Vision types had already decided to go with their own candidate

Then there’s the Non-Partisan Association, which is going through its own tumult. That’s largely because the party, which only really comes alive around election time, is dealing with four internal groups: the new members and those supporting Hector Bremner, the guy who came from nowhere to win the NPA by-election, thanks to an energetic campaign that Mark Marissen was involved in; the new members and board directors who favour Glen Chernen, Vancouver’s own populist politico who has attracted attention the last few years with his efforts to expose what he sees as corrupt deals between the city and developers; and the NPA old guard, which has largely rallied around park-board commissioner John Coupar; and another NPA group — the potential donors and big-money types like Chip Wilson and Peter Armstrong — who have clustered around Ken Sim.

As the world knows, the NPA has declined to let Hector Bremner run as a mayoral candidate, for so far unspecified reasons. My story on this here.

3. Then we have the independent “unity” candidates for the left, which include Kennedy Stewart (story here), Shauna Sylvester (story here) and possibly Patrick Condon (story here)

4. And, finally, there are the other parties, which are having a better time of it in a way because they are focused on a certain targeted mission and they don’t have ambitions to take over city council. For the Green Party, the big question is whether Adriane Carr should run for the mayor’s job and risk losing a guaranteed council seat (my bet is that she won’t with all the new contenders in the race), while OneCity and COPE are dedicating their energy to recruiting a few, not too many so as to avoid watering down their own vote, council, school board and park board candidates who can give them a presence.

Lots more to say about all of this but I’ll save it for another time. I welcome your comments on how everyone is doing.